Daylight

Have you ever had a dream where you find yourself all alone and all you can hear are voices, but you don’t know where they’re coming from? Are you still afraid of the dark?

I will confess, I did get over my fear of the dark but since I started playing Daylight, I think that fear has returned. Let me explain why…

What You Need to Know

In Daylight, you play as Sarah. After waking up in an abandoned hospital with your mobile phone as the only light source you have, a strange person talks to you from the darkness but doesn’t give you much information about why you’re there. You have to find your way out, and with strange noises lurking in the blackness and you need to uncover what is happening to get out.

You need to collect documents and notes called ‘remnants,’ and once you have found all of the items in your area you unlock a ‘sigil.’ These sigil items, like a teddy bear or a bible, are linked to the hospital’s past and bringing the sigil to the ‘Seal of Shadows’ will unlock the next part of the building.

You don’t have any weapons in this game. All you have is your phone, glow sticks and flares. You use the glow sticks to find markings where you can find these remnants, but some remnants leave strange marks on your arm. This is where it gets interesting, because the more markings you get the more you attract the ‘Shadow People,’ and as as these creatures appear you have two choices: Use a flare to make them disappear or run as fast as you can and don’t look back. As your threat level increases, the more likely these ‘shadow people’ will appear.

What’s New?

One very unique feature Daylight is that the levels are randomly generated every time you play – you will never find the same level layout. This adds to the scare factor and what is worse, the antagonists spawn randomly, too, so you will always need to find your way around, not knowing when they will appear. This wouldn’t be a horror game if there was lots of light, so you will be crawling around in the dark most of the time. Sometimes it is so dark, your phone doesn’t supply enough light to see more than two steps ahead of you.

What’s the Same?

I have played many scary games before, like Silent Hill, but I have never experienced the level of creepiness present in this game.

You’ll Enjoy Daylight If You Liked…

… previous creepy survival horror games, like Silent Hill.

… the first-person exploration of Outlast.

What I Liked

- 4.) The level of detail. It might be very dark, but they have achieved great eye candy with the Unreal Engine 4. If more games start using the UE4, we are in for a real treat.

- 3.) I really loved the fact that every time you play the game, the layout of the level changes. This adds so much to the level of replay value. It might be a similar experience again and again, but it will keep freaking you out every time.

- 2.) The lack of plot details when you start the game really helps with the mystery and suspense. I kept wondering why I was there but couldn’t help diving deeper into the horrors of the hospital. It really kept me on the edge of my seat.

- 1.) A horror game always depends on the visuals and unexpected moments when something jumps out at you, but in Daylight I have to say that sound is the biggest factor in the horror. The game is best played with headphones or if you have a great audio surround sound system. The developers were able to scare me by making just one small sound.

Scariest Moment

The scariest moment for me was when I entered the archives room, and the power in that part of the hospital is out requiring me to reset the circuit breaker. As I was walking down the corridors, I heard the sound of something running behind me, and then a small box of files fell over next to me.

The level of anxiety was already high at this point, and after I stood still for two minutes and scraped together enough courage to continue, I walked around the corner and there he/she/it was! Standing in front of the breaker with no flares… you can just try and imagine what happened next.

What I Didn’t Like

- 2.) The lack of checkpoints and a save option is bit weird for me. There are checkpoints at certain areas of the game, but they far apart and every time you close the game and start up again, you start from the beginning. I understand why this is, but I found the distance between checkpoints a bit disappointing.

- 1.) I discovered an odd bug where I would continue the story and then all I saw was my character running into nothingness, beforen the whole screen went dark. It happened twice and it forced me to start a new game.

Least Favourite Moment

Unfortunately Daylight only supports DirectX 11 which means I had to source a new video card to play.

Daylight Review – Launch Trailer

What’s Extra?

The fact that you will never have the same experience twice in the game is really exciting. There isn’t much I can tell you about this as I don’t want to really spoil the game for you. Daylight also comes with the added feature of making you afraid of the dark again…

The Bottom Line

If you enjoy horror games, and even if you don’t, you have to play Daylight – it’s now one of the best games I have played this year. I would recommend you play in a dark room with headphones as that will really pull you into the experience, as though you are actually walking through the corridors of the hospital.